Flame and Shadows by Night
by SixPerfections
Summary: Yang Xiao Long is the adopted daughter of terrorist and revolutionary leader Cinder Fall. When she finds out she has a half-sister she never knew about Yang sets off to find her. Little did she know she would find a lot more than just family in Vale. Strong!Dark(er)!Yang. Bumblebee AU.


**Yang Xiao Long is the adopted daughter of terrorist and revolutionary leader Cinder Fall. When she finds out she has a half-sister she never knew about Yang sets off to find her. Little did she know she would find a lot more than just family in Vale. Strong!Dark(er)!Yang. Bumblebee AU.**

**This story is rated M for pretty much the whole enchilada; violence, language and sexuality. **

0000

It was three days before Yang's twenty first birthday and her mom had been hinting all week that she had a special present for the fiery blonde. Normally she was a good sport about that sort of thing but Cinder's teasing about having something she'll love had been relentless. Yang decided to do a little covert recon to find out what the hell it was that had her mother smiling like a smug and particularly fat cat. Thus she found herself doing something she would never have dared to do when she was younger... she had snuck into her mother's room and began to rifle through her things in search of her illusive present. Granted if she was caught Cinder Fall would almost certainly find a good many creative ways to punish her horribly, probably starting with a much more vigorous than normal 'training session', but Yang was willing to risk it.

She knew this was a foolish idea but the general atmosphere at their base had been so energetic and damn near giddy it had infected her as well prompting her to be more reckless than she otherwise might have been. After more than six years of fighting their organization the Chosen of Artemis and Orion, or the CAO for short, was on the verge of achieving what they had been fighting for since their inception. None of the rank and file was sure when but there was a general consensus that it would only be weeks before they finally toppled the inept government of Vacuo and established a better, stronger rule upon the kingdom. The so-called "popularly elected Senate" and the Grand Consul himself had lost most of their military power and a good chunk of their popular support. The fighters of the CAO were eager and there was an almost festive air as everyone awaited orders to attack the last pockets of armed resistance. Maybe it was stupid but all of that combined just egged Yang on to do something incredibly foolish and violate the privacy of the incredibly powerful and dangerous leader of the CAO... an unwise thing to do even if she was your own mother.

All the truly important files for the movement were kept in a much more secure location but Yang knew that things of a more personal nature were kept in her room with little more than the door lock to keep them safe. Thus she had let herself in with her own key and proceeded to rifle through everything taking care to leave thing as undisturbed looking as possible. Cinder would probably still catch on but it was worth it if she could get one over on her insufferably smug mother when she correctly "guessed" her present right before she opened it. Yang would need to make sure to have someone with a camera ready to capture her face when at that moment. It was so rare that anyone managed to pull a fast one on the astonishingly astute rebel leader.

Yang paused her searching when the small table next to the functional military cot opened to reveal something that caught her interest. It was a thick file that seemed to have been casually tossed in the drawer as if the owner had been looking through it recently. What really caught her interest was that the file was clearly labeled "Yang Xiao Long."

Licking her lips Yang had the disconcerting feeling of being six again and getting caught rifling through her mother's underwear drawer. That is knowing she was playing with fire but not being able to contain her rising curiosity. Reaching into the cheap wooden desk Yang gingerly pulled out the file. The edges were well worn and the covering slightly discolored like somebody had handled it often over the years. Feeling uncharacteristically nervous Yang opened the file and began to read.

It wasn't any kind of official file, it was Cinder's personal file of all things Yang related. Copies of her birth certificate, medical records, records from combat school before she'd had to drop out at fifteen due to all of a sudden finding herself the daughter of Vacuo's public enemy number one. There were also other things and a lot of personal handwritten notes. One of the carefully labeled subsections in the folder filled with these handwritten notes was clearly labeled "Yin Xiao Long."

Yang swallowed, her hands suddenly feeling moist and very aware of her own heartbeat in her chest. While Cinder was her mother in every way that mattered her biological mother had been a Huntress named Yin Xiao Long. Her birth mother had died on a hunt when Yang was just two years old. Cinder and Yin had been partners and best friends since their earliest days in combat school in Vale and Cinder had adopted Yang after Yin had been killed without a second thought. It made a certain kind of sense that Cinder would keep her personal notes and thoughts on Yin Xiao Long in the file she kept on Yang. Mystery of her birthday present forgotten Yang sat down and quickly decided to use the time she had to read all she could on the mother she never knew.

0000

An hour later Yang was still sitting on the floor hunched over the file reading page after page on Cinder's personal musings and recollections on her birth mother. It felt uncomfortably invasive since much of what was written was deeply personal in nature and Cinder was never one who would readily share her innermost thoughts and feelings with others. There was fondness and pain, old and lingering like a poorly healed wound, painstakingly poured into every page with the devotion of a very real love. Yang had known her mom and her birth mother had been close but she hadn't known the depth of it. According to the notes they had started to call each other sister as a joke in their younger days and it grew to be very much a real thing. It was painful and uncomfortable for Yang but at the same time there was a kind of hunger that she had been scarcely aware of being sated as she learned more about her birth mother than she had ever known before.

Of course Cinder had told her about her biological mother. However like any mom might Cinder had only really told Yang the things she thought the girl should hear, all the ways in which her mother had been a good and righteous person who fought the Grimm and loved with a quiet dignity that was inexplicably powerful even if it wasn't showy. But she had never heard a lot of the remembered anecdotes, things from when she had been a young woman or the flaws and mistakes she had made. Somehow knowing that her birth mother had been flawed made Yang feel closer to her, like the two of them maybe did have a great deal in common even if their personalities turned out to be very different.

As she progressed she read some scattered thoughts of Cinder about herself and her father. The thoughts on her brought a smile to Yang's face. It seemed Cinder was a lot more mushy and free with her emotions on paper than she was in real life. You know your parents love you but having tangible proof in your hands and reading about it was an amazing feeling. _Sometimes I feel guilty thinking about her as my daughter since she was yours Yin. But then I think about what you would have wanted. Not that it would have really mattered much either way in the end I don't think. I couldn't possibly love her any less. In a lot of ways I think Yang saved me from going down a truly dark path after you died._

That last sentence was kind of a shock. To Yang Cinder had always been a loving mother but she knew her mom was… well, ruthless. There wasn't any nicer way to put it. Once fighting started in earnest Cinder's already inflated reputation turned infamous. When Vacuo's Hunter-Commander started cutting down scores of soldiers and battle androids people tended to take notice. How much worse could she have possibly been? Her mom was already a terrifying flaming force of nature. Yang decided the world was better off not knowing what a truly diabolical Cinder Fall would have been like.

Next she got to read a bit about her father, a man who she knew very little about. In fact she didn't even know his name. All she knew was that her mother had left him before she was born and had moved with Cinder to Vacuo. Other than that Cinder had refused to talk about him since it was obvious that Cinder hated the man though Yang had never found out why. All that she would say was that her mother had left him for a good reason and that Yang was better off not knowing the man. When she was young Yang had no choice but to accept this at face value and there had been no reason to doubt her mother's assessment even if she had been curious. While Yang wasn't about to run off to Vale to look for him she did want to know more about her biological father.

More importantly, even if her dad truly was a scumbag did she have any more family out there? That was the one question that truly bothered Yang when it came to her origins. Cinder said Yin had been all alone in the world and she closed up anytime she brought up her father. Maybe there was something in the pseudo-journal in her file that could shed some light on that mystery in her background. Getting anything out of Cinder when she didn't want to cooperate was mission impossible.

As she read she discovered why her mother had left her father and why Cinder hated him so much. The man had been having an affair with another woman, someone named Summer, while Yin and Tarbis (so that was his name?) had been engaged. When Yin found out and confronted him Tarbis confessed to being in love with the other woman even though _the previous week they had been discussing the wedding date_. Any idle feelings of paternal love or benefit of the doubt died a quick and sudden death when she read that. Yin had wanted nothing to do with him after that and she knew Tarbis would try to insert himself into her life and that of her child if he found out she was pregnant so she left Vale and headed to Vacuo along with her partner Cinder. It was such a soap opera it would have been funny if it wasn't an actual tragedy that had really happened to her own mother.

What a clusterfuck. While she wished Cinder had freely shared some of this sooner she could at least understand not wanting to talk to her daughter about that sort of thing. Not that it made it right. Yang made a note to have a frank conversation with her mom about keeping things from her in the not too distant future. She wasn't a kid anymore and her mom sometimes tended to forget that.

Yang was nearing the end of the quasi-journal when she read something that, even if she didn't know it at the time, would set in motion a chain of events that would change her life and lives of every person in Remnant forever.

_I kept tabs on Tarbis like you wanted to make sure he never found out about Yang though in hindsight it might have been a wasted effort. He never suspected you were pregnant and was married to that slut Summer within the year. They had a little girl some three years after that and by all reports everything was perfectly ordinary until the woman died on a hunt some years later. The chance of that slime learning about Yang is all but zero at this point. _

Yang's eyes widened and her throat constricted. She stared at the page and read it over what must have been a dozen times before she closed her jaw because she'd been coming dangerously close to drooling on herself. Her heart hammered in her chest and she felt a little lightheaded. All thoughts about how much she hated her father vanished. Instead it was replaced with one incessant thought repeating over and over again in her mind.

_I have a sister._


End file.
